Demography of Household Economic Well-Being

Varsha Rani, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Over the past several decades, Indian society has experienced incredible socio-economic changes intertwined with demographic transition, resulting in complex family diversifications. Against this backdrop, this study aimed at detangling the effect of changing demographic structure of households on their economic well-being. This study adopts the OECD (2011-13) framework of economic well-being as an outcome measure accounting for overall well-being. Notably, the household structure serves as the primary unit of the major economic functions: production, consumption, savings and household distributions. The study uses CMIE’s CPHS dataset, employing three-stage empirical approach: first, assess the impact of changing household structure on economic well-being using panel data regression; second, assess the relative percentage contribution of household structure to economic well-being using decomposition models; third, used dynamic panel data regression approach to adjust endogeneity problems in the causation between changing household structure on economic well-being. The preliminary findings suggest that male-dominant and male-majority households perform better, while female-alone and male-alone households perform poorly in overall economic well-being. However, the only male category has better economic well-being in comparison to only female category. Thus, demographic purview of economic well-being provides novel insights into the shifting dynamics of economic development in the country vis-à-vis demographic transition.

Keywords: Economic Demography, Families, Unions and Households, Longitudinal studies

See extended abstract.